Tech Connects: Mentoring Tools
September 26, 2008
By Margery Weinstein
So you've launched your big, exciting mentoring program, have executive buy-in and participation, and are raring to go. Your employees have heard they soon will be able to sign up for mentoring, or to serve as a mentor, and they’re enthusiastic, too. Unfortunately, though, in the midst of all this mentoring joy, you have a problem: how to support the administration, organization, and delivery of the program. The people resources are available, but you could use a little in the way of technical support, if such a thing exists. The most important element of mentoring—the give and take of mentor and mentee—is something no technology system can help you with, but, luckily, there is technical support out there to help you with most of the rest of it.
For CA, Inc., an IT management software company, (formerly known as Computer Associates International, Inc.), technology is an essential piece of its mentoring, or coaching, program. It uses the GeoEngage collaboration software suite from vendor GeoLearning to provide a platform for coach and coachee to communicate. Specifically, the company makes use of GeoEngage's eCommunity tool, says Ron Ateshian, senior principal learning consultant, worldwide learning systems and infrastructure. This eCommunity function enables CA to deliver Web 2.0 technologies relevant to mentoring exchanges such as discussion threading, wikis, blogs, and the ability to make use of aggregated Web content (a collection of Web feeds available in one spot). "We're using these specific capabilities to wrap against existing learning events," Ateshian explains. For its employee community of Java software developers, the company had several instructors push their assignments out using the discussion threading option, so learners could ask questions on an ongoing basis and bounce ideas off the instructor. One-on-one collaboration "rooms" exist inside eCommunity, where students submit their assignments for individual attention from instructors as coaches.
CA plans to make use of a similar learning structure for its other teams of software programmers in its research and development department. Ateshian says the technology has made all the difference. "They were used to 'blood-and-guts' training, and they got little attention from our training department in the past," he says of the company's programming learners. Now "they have [collaborative] communities available to them," he notes, "where these people will be diving in to learn all these programming languages."
Near and Far
At SAIC, a company specializing in scientific, engineering, systems integration, and technical solutions, technology helps administer the mentoring program and provides an online platform for mentors and mentees to "meet," says Training Manager Suzy Bobbitt. The company, which has mentoring participants spread across offices in San Diego, CA; McLean, VA; Orlando, FL; Suffolk, VA; and other locations throughout the U.S., piloted a mentoring program last year. To bridge the distance between mentors and mentees in different locations, SAIC turned to tele- and Web-conferencing and video teleconferencing solutions from Avaya Inc.'s DataXchange solution. The technology primarily is used to guide participants through the mentoring program. One upcoming Web conferencing session, for example, details how mentors are expected to help mentees map out career development plans.
DataXchange also is used to facilitate "Lunch and Learn" sessions offered by what SAIC calls situational mentors, or one-time-only mentors who offer expertise on one particular subject area. Bobbitt says mentors and mentees alike feel no hesitancy accepting program guidance through technology from a source based elsewhere. Says Beverly Seay, general manager of the ASSET Business Unit with SAIC, "SAIC believes in integrating technologies into our work processes and products. As a result, we have a deep appreciation for the leverage and enhancements that technology brings to our mentoring programs."
Along with conferencing solutions, SAIC gets support for its mentoring program through a Web-based tool that helps with backend organization, such as administration, online forms, and calendar appointments, and even matching mentors and mentees. The company accesses this tool through its partnership with The Training Connection, a professional development firm. Mentors and mentees use the tool to set up appointments with each other and set goals for their relationship, among other uses. The tool also provides a page for mentors and mentees to outline an action plan that ensures topics the mentee needs addressed are dealt with and linked to job performance. Mentoring instructional designers use the tool to conduct evaluations of the program.
Bobbitt says that while SAIC, as a technology company, has early-adopter employees, other non-technology companies seeking extra help for mentoring should take the plunge. "Use the technology to your advantage to give employees a broader spectrum of information from a larger pool of people."
Minding Mentoring
International Game Technology (IGT), a provider of gaming systems and software, finds technology from vendor Learn.com useful in tracking the work of mentors and mentees, along with helping to build development plans, says Manager of Course Development and Internal Readiness Catherine King. It also uses technology from AT&T Connect to support the mentoring program's online one-on-one sessions, such as train-the-trainer coaching to train e-learning facilitators how to teach online better, points out Senior Project Manager Sandy Tranfaglia. "We used it not only to teach e-learning facilitation skills, but to play back the recording [of the trainer] and [the mentor's] review," says Tranfaglia. "I myself spent quite a bit of time with a mentor who helped me increase my ability to teach online, working with the [mentoring] tool, being able to recognize when people have questions, or using polling questions to make sure people are still with us," she explains. "So, we actually utilize the medium we're teaching in as a mentoring device within that technology."
For other, non-trainer learners, such as gaming software programmers, the online platform provided by AT&T Connect can be used to give mentor and mentee a place to collaborate. Programmers receiving mentoring are able to work on a software application in real time with the guidance of their mentor.
Meanwhile, the scheduling and completion of these mentoring sessions is tracked in the Learn.com Learning Management System (LMS), LearnCenter. "There is a Sub-LearnCenter, which is a subsidiary Web page [within the LMS]," says King, "where all the coaching schedules and opportunities for people to get online with coaches and do online training, are tracked." Records are available, for instance, of how many times learners tried to do the assigned tasks on their own and how many times with the benefit of a coach's helping hand.
The backend organization provided by LearnCenter cuts a wide geographic swath, says Internal Readiness Supervisor Sharon Ruesch, who also manages the coaching program. "We connect to our Macao and IGT Europe offices," she says, "and provide coaching throughout."
Sidebar: Quick Tips
• Use a collaboration software tool with individualized "rooms" where mentors and mentees can meet to review assignments.
• The same tele- or Web-conferencing tool you use to conduct business meetings also is a great help to mentoring. Use it not only to bring long-distance mentors and mentees together, but to provide centralized guidance of the mentoring program for all participants.
• Invest in an online tool, whether through a learning management system (LMS) or other means, to track and organize mentoring partnerships and appointments, input action and career development plans, and record job performance outcomes.
• Use the technology to think big, maybe even increasing the scope of your mentoring program to global offices.
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